The Last Satyr: The Company is Formed Part 1
Seven Riders

The morning itself gave the boy his first lesson in drinking ale. In turns out that the magic that makes women beautiful is only temporary. While you sleep, they change back. It’s true or leastways it is with human girls or it certainly was with her. He didn’t know about the others. But it gave him an important lesson on human girls and that is, not only do you get yourself a good look at their faces by the light of day before you ever ask them to marry you, but you do so in the morning. That latter part wasn’t so easy to do now as his head ached and his eyes hurt on account of the window was so bright. Or maybe it was because her looks just hurt his eyes so?

He slept till noon that day before they set out for the Mithril Mountains, heading west for the south of the two snow passes. They could see snow on the distant mountains, which were still mighty bright in the boy’s eyes but not so much now as it was finally melting with the spring.

“Our timing appears to be good,” said Amien as he led the way. “The snow should be melted and the pass should be open by the time we reach it.”

Arathorn rode with them alongside Amien. In theory, he was their guide, although none was needed with Amien and a sharp-eyed elf in their group. They all rode black horses, including Arathorn, and Marroh had gotten his pony. The dwarf still complained much about having to ride it but conceded the need. With bats searching the mountains for intruders by night, they had to cross the final distance to the mountains fast and only a horse could do that.

Arathorn would ride with them all the way to the mines and then take their horses back to the land of the Rim when they dismounted to enter the mines on foot. That way drow bats at night would not spot the horses outside the mine's entrance. Arathorn had explained to the dwarf that the men of the Rim had also figured out the drow had changed the markings of the dwarf tunnels and, more importantly, they knew more. The drow had to mark the mine shafts themselves in order to replace their own way back out of the mines afterward and the men of the Rim had deciphered this mark, allowing them to follow the drow back to their underground cities and he showed the sign to Marroh. The dwarf now knew how to negotiate the tunnels by this same means, although the marks were difficult to replace by anyone in the dark except by another drow, for drow see nearly as well in the dark as others do by day.

Once they eventually entered the mines and Arathorn brought the horses back to King Grendel and his waiting mounted troop, the men of the Rim would then begin their assault on the cavern of Deep Hai to draw away the drow guards from the nearby mines. That would be their chance to get in.

As to how they would get back out, there was no such plan as yet.

They had plenty of time to think of one though as it was five days’ ride, even on swift mounts, to the pass. But in those five days, no ideas occurred to them.

On the fifth day, the seven of them reached the south mountain pass and passed below and beyond the Deep Hai to their left. The snow had mostly melted and the horses’ hooves were able to pick their way through the fallen rock of the ancient path. Whenever possible, they steered left, looking for the mine entrances of the dwarves. They kept a hurried pace, for, when the darkness came, not only would there be bats about spying but the drow could come out of their tunnels to mount their own surface patrols.

Three times they stopped before a mine entrance, but each time, after examining it, Marroh bade them ride on. They were now moving along the side of a ravine with a great slide of rock beneath it ahead.

“See that enormous, great pile of fallen rock ahead?” pointed the dwarf. “It is called slag. When a dwarf tunnels into a mountain, he throws out the worthless rock he digs out behind him as slag. It gathers outside the entrance and the bigger the slag pile, the deeper the mine runs. By the sheer size of that slag pile, I guarantee we shall replace a mine above it that runs deep. There is enough slag there to build your own mountain!”

What the dwarf said was true. Before them rose a towering monument of broken rocks, a testament to the tireless toil of generations of dwarves. The immense pile stretched upward, filling the ravine with its sheer massiveness. Each stone, weathered by time and effort, whispered tales of the miners who had hewn them from the depths of the earth. The scale of the slag heap was staggering, a silent tribute to the enduring legacy of the dwarven craftsmanship that had shaped it over countless years.

Above the pile of slag, there was, indeed, a mine entrance. The six of the company dismounted reluctantly there, for they all knew they must enter. Arathorn stayed mounted while Amien roped the horses together for them to follow Arathorn back.

“Here is where we part company,” said Amien.

The border captain nodded and turned his horse away.

“You have until dawn, maybe longer, to replace your way in. After that, we attack,” he said in leaving.

“I wish you luck in your battle!” called Amien.

“And I wish you luck with yours’.”

The six of them stood there with their packs and weapons ready before that deep, dark forbidding hole. Not a word was spoken. They were as silent as the earth itself. Though the dwarves were long gone, none wanted to enter where drow had recently been before.

Graybeard led the way in first, followed by Marroh, the dwarf. Next came Amien and young Joe. The last two were Ronthiel and the boy, each frightened and unwilling, but also not wanting to be left behind. The boy felt the icy fingers of dread run down his spine and looked at Ronthiel, whose face was flushed with fear, the same dread showing in his eyes like two shining mirrors reflecting his inner turmoil. Yet it was Ronthiel who was the first to enter that black abyss.

They found the now familiar dwarf torches within and lit them, following the shaft into the mountain. When it finally branched out into a chamber of many tunnels, the dwarf made his search for his first drow mark.

Unlike the dwarves, who made their tunnel marks high in order to be easily found and read by upheld torches, the drow made their own marks low and by their feet in order for only them to see and follow. They had to bend low and search, and it took all six of them to finally replace their first mark.

“It is this way,” said Marroh.

With a sense of deep, dark depression, they began to follow the mark of the drow and the path of the tunnel that led ominously down underground into dark unknown.